Part 18 (2/2)
”So am I.”
She made no answer.
”Were you asleep when I came?”
”No, I was thinking.”
A sound of anguish came from the tent, and Susan set her teeth on her underlip stiffening. He looked in its direction, then back at her.
”What's the matter there?” he asked.
”A child is being born.”
He made no comment, swept the background of tents and wagon roofs with an investigating eye that finally came to a stop on the sleeping children.
”Are these yours?”
”No, they belong to the woman who is sick.”
His glance left them as if uninterested, and he leaned backward to pull his blanket out more fully. His body, in the sleekly pliant buckskins, was lean and supple. As he twisted, stretching an arm to draw out the crumpled folds, the lines of his long back and powerful shoulders showed the sinuous grace of a cat. He relaxed into easeful full length, propped on an elbow, his red hair coiling against his neck.
Susan stole a stealthy glance at him. As if she had spoken, he instantly raised his head and looked into her eyes.
His were clear and light with a singularly penetrating gaze, not bold but intent, eyes not used to the detailed observation of the peopled ways, but trained to unimpeded distances and to search the faces of primitive men. They held hers, seeming to pierce the acquired veneer of reserve to the guarded places beneath. She felt a slow stir of antagonism, a defensive gathering of her spirit as against an intruder.
Her pride and self-sufficiency responded, answering to a hurried summons. She was conscious of a withdrawal, a closing of doors, a shutting down of her defenses in face of aggression and menace. And while she rallied to this sudden call-to-arms the strange man held her glance across the fire. It was she who spoke slowly in a low voice:
”Where do you come from?”
”From Taos, and after that Bent's Fort.”
”What is your name?”
”Low Courant.”
Then with an effort she turned away and bent over the children. When she looked back at him he was rolled in his blanket, and with his face to the fire was asleep.
Lucy came presently for the hot water with a bulletin of progress growing each moment more direful. Her eyes fell on the sleeping man, and she said, peering through the steam of the bubbling water:
”Who's that?”
”A strange man.”
”From where?”
”Taos, and after that Bent's Fort,” Susan repeated, and Lucy forgot him and ran back to the tent.
There was a gray line in the east when she returned to say the child was born dying as it entered the world, and Bella was in desperate case. She fell beside her friend, quivering and sobbing, burying her face in Susan's bosom. Shaken and sickened by the dreadful night they clung together holding to each other, as if in a world where love claimed such a heavy due, where joy realized itself at such exceeding cost, nothing was left but the bond of a common martyrdom. Yet each of them, knowing the measure of her pain, would move to the head of her destiny and take up her heavy engagement without fear, obeying the universal law.
But now, caught in the terror of the moment, they bowed their heads and wept together while the strange man slept by the fire.
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